Jackson Browne - Running on Empty

Recorded onstage, backstage, in three different hotel rooms, and on a Continental Silver Eagle tour bus during a cross-country 1977 tour, Running on Empty is a paean to life on the road. Jackson Browne's sense of camaraderie extended to the road crew, if "The Load Out," a love song to his roadies, is to be believed. Browne is much more blithe here than in his earlier outings. But Empty also represents a fleeting lighthearted moment for the singer-cum-poet whose concerns became more political than personal after its appearance. Beneath its flippant surface, this disc is a look at the lengths Browne and his friends went to avoid facing the demands of the touring life. What with the frequent drug references, misogynistic references to on-the-fly pairings with women, and the sobering line in the title track--"I look around for the friends I used to pull me through / Looking into their eyes, I see them running, too"--one realizes that Browne was much more comfortable on the road than off. --Jaan Uhelszki Amazon.com

Solid from Start to Finish

Great Album from a great artist. Highlights include The Title Track , "Rosie " , " Nothin' But Time " , " The Load Out / Stay ", " Love Needs a Heart " and " Cocaine " . I reccommend the DVD Audio version if you have a player . It features 2 Bonus tracks , " Cocaine Revisited " and an instrumental . Nice CD to pop in when taking a road trip . Not a weak track on it. February 27, 2008

A great introduction to Jackson Browne, if not an accurate one

First things first: "Running On Empty" and "The Load-Out / Stay" are probably deserving of their ubiquity on classic-rock radio. They're the closest this record comes to the standards Browne set on his earliest albums.

The rest of Running On Empty is slight, and goes down easy, and that's both a good thing and a bad one. With its well-known bookends and its easy-to-comprehend thematic threads, it's a great record to recommend to a Jackson Browne novice. After all, everything - the melodies, the singing, the playing - is solid. It's a completely accessible record. If you like it, you'll probably check out more of his work, and you'll either find yourself stunned by the considerably greater depth of some of it, or put off by the fact that those other records deal with grey areas rather than black and white.

(I started off in the latter camp. Running On Empty was the first Jackson Browne album I ever heard, back when I was fourteen or so. I listened to it constantly, and really liked it, but it took me a long, long time to get into any of his other music. Isolated songs from Saturate Before Using and Late For the Sky made some impact, but I might've been too young to understand how truly adult those records were. Running On Empty, however, never confused me one bit.)

Running On Empty was recorded on the road - at concerts, on buses, in hotel rooms - and captures that ambience well. The snatches of dialogue, the intimacy of "Cocaine" and the first half of "The Road," and most of all the shouted requests for familiar older tunes that precede the title track all speak to the weariness, the repetitiveness of being constantly in motion. But Neil Young beat him to the punch several years earlier with Time Fades Away, a frustrating, messy record that nevertheless runs rings around Running On Empty precisely because it's uncomfortable and requires that it be listened to with an open mind. Running On Empty, on the other hand, requires ears and nothing more.

Some critics have pointed to the songwriting credits on Running On Empty as evidence that Browne was living the title phrase to the extreme - only the title track and "You Love the Thunder" are solo efforts, and four of the songs don't bear Browne's name at all. This is often seen as laziness or exhaustion rearing its head, but it may have simply been a natural collaborative outgrowth of being on tour. Who knows. Even giving Browne the benefit of the doubt and chalking up his less-than-impressive compositional record on Running On Empty to a desire to work well with others, it's pretty hard to ignore the fact that most of these songs are simply not that great. Comfortable, catchy, and even mostly memorable, perhaps, but just not up to Browne's earlier standard.

Naturally, Running On Empty became Browne's biggest success, closing one chapter of his career and starting a new, less thrilling one through which he could simply coast, rather than have to navigate. January 11, 2008

Sandi on Jackson Browne

Love this album. Love Jackson Browne's music. He is a musical poet.
All of his music is top notch. Deep!! November 15, 2007

One of my personal top 20 albums of all time

This album is as good today as it was when it was released in 1977.

November 8, 2007

A mirror of the seventies touring life...

A great album...I haven't any doubt. This album may be considered as a crossroad of the seventies' life of many artists (such as The Eagles). For first, the touring life, wich means to travel along many thousand miles away from home and family. For second, the drugs (problem already reflected in the Eagles' album "Hotel California" of 1976). For third, the emotional mixture of happiness and pain. This album reveals an important message: To enjoy as much as possible the life's best moments, wich are usually very short and pass very quickly...Think about a live concert. When the live concert of your favourite artist is over you can always remember it as an emotional experience, you can listen to the records and watch videos..."and you wake-up in your town" (the final verses of "the load-Out"). By the artist's side things are different. He moves through many towns wich begin "to look the same". When the live concert finishes "is just another town along the road". The only moment of relax and happiness is when the artis plays his songs on the stage, like a dialog between him ad his public, his fans, his friends. The touring life has its lightly moments during these meetings with millions of friends through the world, who love his music "tonight the people were so fine"..."We just pass the time in our hotel rooms and wander'round backstage...TILL THOSE LIGHTS COME UP AND WE HEAR THAT CROWD AND WE REMEMBER WHY WE CAME!" (from the song "the load out"). The same aspect it may be found in te song "the road", wich reflect a static moment of the touring life, when "the load out" reflects a dinamic, a traveling aspect (driving all night to another town)of a rock band's life. The indicated songs are the main guideline to enjoy the album...The other songs speak by themselves...specially by guitar, piano and vocal performances. One thing is for sure: Jackson Browne in this album sings by his heart.
I own it on CD and recently I recovered my uncle's 30 years old vinyl, wich I cleaned as best as possible and this one actually I use to play, to sense the past nostalgic seventies feeling. July 3, 2007

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